The Limit – sample    

Ernie was the only man I ever heard say he’d been too young to serve in the 14-18 war and too old for the last lot. He was a squat little bloke with a reddish-greyish face and sort of dingy blue eyes that looked out from beneath a continuous dark brow with flecks of grey in it. His hair too was grey above his ears and it darkened towards a small round bald patch on top. Bristol man he was. That’s what he always said, anyway.
Ernie was on the scratch gang and so was I at that time. Our job, that particular December afternoon, was to collect up all the mess left under the scaffold by the bricklayers and sort it into rubbish in one pile and re-usable half-bricks in another. How exactly a half-brick qualified as re-usable had not been made clear to us by Eddie, the ground foreman, and doubtful cases were the object of some quite lengthy discussions between us. A lot of the bits of brick were pretty well frozen into the ground and it was a case of leaving them where they were or knocking them out with a shovel. A cold wind funnelled between the almost finished rows of houses on that council estate that was going up in South Leicester in 1951.

Ernie considered the job a cushy number and hoped it would last a good few days, but I was waiting for a wagon to arrive so’s we could unload it with five or six of the other lads and have a bit of different chat. Ernie and his half-bricks were getting on my nerves. Every time I looked at my watch, it hadn’t moved on more than five minutes. Roll on six o’clock and call in for a couple of pints in town between two bus-rides. But it was only five to four.

Ernie saw me looking at my watch, and that started him off.

‘Trouble with a lot of you young ’uns today, Frank, I mean in this day and age, is that you don’t know when you’re onto a good thing. Not been through it like us older generation. Two World Wars I’ve seen, and that makes somethin’ of you, an’ believe me, sortin’ out a few bricks on an afternoon, well it ain’t all that bad, not after you been through what some of us older generation ’ave.’ Ernie looked carefully and from all angles at a half-brick he’d knocked out of the frozen mud. ‘Re-usable, you’d say, would you?’

‘Definitely re-usable that one, Ernie.’ He tossed it over onto the re-usable pile and again squatted down and gazed at the bits of broken brick and rusty tie-wires welded into the ground.

‘Amazing what you can get out of stuff folks throw away. Lot of stuff, you’d think it was finished but there’s always someone can get somethin’ out of it. Even rubbish like that.’ Ernie nodded towards the pile of un-re-usables we had made. He looked at it for a long time and, despite what he was saying, his face took on a kind of a hopeless look. He looked down at his boots and his trousers. ‘Take these trousies. Good pair of trousies these were. Still are, in fact. They’re mucked up and that, but there’s good material in ’em. Good warm trousies. All wool. Now these weren’t made for me. Bloke I know, smart set-up bloke, ’e passed ’em on to me, knowing as like I work outdoors. 11firm in town. Soon as the trousies get a bit of a shine on the arse, that’s them finished, and ’e’ll get onto me and ’e’ll say: “Ernest, since like as you work outdoors, you’ll be glad of these in the winter.” ’Cos ’e can’t turn up for work in shiny-arsed trousies, can ’e? I mean, not in head office. So, I get ’em. Every March-April and again, come October or so, ’e has a bit of a clear-out and ’e gives me trousies, or jackets sometimes, or even shirts for workin’ in. ’E’ll always say, “Ernest, you ’ave these since like as you work outdoors.” Keeps me in work-clothes, ’e does. Good bloke to know. Very nice acquaintance. Like I say, I’m glad to know ’im. Works both ways mind, ’cos ’e’s glad to pass ’em on to me. We’ve got a sort of a partnership: ’im at ’ead office and me workin’ outdoors.’

I looked at my watch again. ‘There you go again: clock-watchin’. Too time-conscious. You don’t really ’preciate life today, ’cos you ain’t been through what we older generation been through.’ Ernie saw my eyes scanning the top end of the site for signs of a wagonload coming in. ‘Course that don’t mean you ain’t a good worker. I’ve watched you work. Believe me, you do your share, not like some of them Irish or Poles or what ’ave you. But it’s a pity you don’t see how lucky you are livin’ in this day and age.’
‘Anyone’d think you won the war single-handed, Ernie, way you go on. You weren’t even in the forces, so you can’t’ve had it all that bad.’ I wished I hadn’t said that, ’cos Ernie turned to me with a pained sort of a look.

‘Well I’ll tell you something, young Frankie: you didn’t go through the thirties. They were dark days, ’specially in the buildin’ trade. It was the slump and that. You were glad of anythin’ that was goin’. You were glad to do anythin’ ’d bring you a bit of money in. I was a young man then, bit older than yourself. Young man. Married to a London girl I’d met at Yarmouth: all my life in front of me. But we didn’t ’ave much fun when we were young, and then the war and that. Well they were dark days all right. You were glad of anythin’ anyone’d give you and you’d be glad of a pair of all wool trousies, shiny-arsed or no. You just couldn’t afford ’em new and that was it. Mind you, I wasn’t a angel or anythin’. I’m not tryin’ to say I was. ’Fact, whenever I was in work I used to drink most what I earnt, that was unless the Missus got ’er ’ands on the money first. Good job she did, too, sometimes. I never told ’er ’ow much I earnt. You should never tell a woman ’ow much you draw. Just give ’er what she needs for the house-keepin’ and maybe a bit extra. If she don’t complain you know she’s gettin’ enough. It wasn’t that the cause of the trouble though: it was the drinkin’ really. Things were pickin’ up towards the end of the thirties. I’d got a start on a big contract in London‒Lambeth it was. We were livin’ down there then. Good money if you put the hours in. Fell in with a bunch of blokes‒mostly single blokes they were‒and we’d always go drinkin’ straight from work and the Missus wouldn’t see me till after closin’ time, three parts drunk and no good for nothin’. Well, she knew that couldn’t go on for long‒’cos you were never in work for long in those days‒and it didn’t. Come Christmas ’38 a whole lot of us were laid off and that was the end of that and I was back pickin’ up day work where I could. But you know, when you get into that heavy drinkin’, well, you can’t stop just like that, least, I couldn’t, and what bit we’d saved up we gradually went through it, as I was givin’ ’er less an’ less for house-keepin’. Cut a long story short, in the end she blew me out. It was ’er ’ouse, you see, not mine, and there was nothin’ I could do. In ’er name: been ’er mother’s ’ouse. You know what she said to me? She said: “Ernie, you can come back ’ere if and when you mend your ways.” Aye: mend your ways like you’d say to a kid. She said: “It’s either me or the drink. You can’t ’ave both.” That’s what she said.’
‘So, what did you do?’

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